Denominational Information and Chart

Denominations and Gordon-Conwell
Gordon-Conwell is proud of its history of evangelical ecumenism as our students, staff and faculty hail from a wide variety of denominational backgrounds. While many of our incoming students come from many good non-denominational or inter-denominational backgrounds, the seminary encourages students to take time to think and pray through their personal theological stances and consider how they might fit well into existing denominations.

There are a great many advantages to belonging to a denomination or association, including help with career services, ordination, networking, ministry training, ministry opportunities and professional development.

The Gordon-Conwell Denominational Chart
The Mentored Ministry Department in collaboration with the Placement Department of Gordon-Conwell has created a Denominational Chart for use by our students and those interested in comparing distinctives of various Christian denominations. We believe that this exercise is especially critical for students planning to pursue ordination. Unless a student believes the Lord is clearly directing them otherwise we strongly encourage students to research and consider affiliating with a denomination that they feel comfortable with. This Chart is designed to be a tool to help them get started in this search.

The denominations listed on this chart were selected based on the various denominational backgrounds represented in the Hamilton student body over the last several years. The categorizations in the Chart are written from a general evangelical stance. Omission of any particular denomination is not intended to reflect a negative view on the part of the seminary, nor does inclusion of any particular denomination necessarily connote Gordon-Conwell's endorsement of that denomination. In addition the description and categorization of any denomination should not connote that denomination's official endorsement of our description.

The Chart is a a tool for our students' use - a launching point for their denomination search. It contains general information regarding various bands of distinctives which we have found to be of particular importance to our students, namely Church Polity, Theology, stances on Women in Leadership, Baptism, and local/regional/national contact information..

The Mentored Ministry Department welcomes any clarifications, updates or corrections from knowledgeable readers or denominational representatives to help us improve the accuracy of the Chart. We also reserve the right to decide whether to adopt these proposed changes or not. Most of all, we hope and pray that this Chart will be of genuine help to our students as they seek God and His direction for their lives and ministry.